Hampstead Heath Ladies' Pond faces legal action

[IwantToRetire]

Hampstead Heath Ladies’ Pond is facing legal action for allegedly failing to ban transgender women despite the landmark Supreme Court gender ruling.

The famed women-only bathing spot has maintained its trans-inclusive policy pending a ‘review’ in spite of the UK’s highest court ruling in April that trans women are not legally female.

Women’s rights campaigners sent a legal letter to the City of London Corporation, which manages the ponds, last week warning they intend to bring a legal challenge unless the policy is revoked with 'immediate effect’.

The legal letter, seen by the Mail, says that the current policy ‘violates the dignity of women using the Ladies’ Pond’ and that the Corporation is ‘operating it unlawfully by allowing trans identifying males to access it’.

From https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14851251/Hampstead-Heath-Ladies-Pond-legal-action-ban-trans-women-Supreme-Court.html

Different version of same story https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/26/hampstead-ladies-pond-swimmers-accuse-trans-women-spying/ and at https://archive.is/fZ31q

So biological men have access to the women's pond, the mixed sex pond and the single sex men's pond.
Biological women are only allowed access to two mixed sex ponds.
How is that fair?

Bee I've asked this on 2 of your threads and not seen an answer, what has the women's pool got that the men's or the mixed sex haven't got? Surely to goodness just swim in the mixed sex if you want to.

This is peak mumsnet

Ticketyboo11, slamming down their gnarly fist on the desk

"Blaady experts, what the fack do they know. I got me common sense"

You know the answer, we all know the answer.

I think you’re confusing Mumsnet with an episode of Only Fools and Horses.

Do the people who run these ponds have any duty to provide a single sex facility?

The million dollar (pound?) question.

Ultimately, no; they don't have to run any facilities at all. Or they could rebadge all three ponds as (properly) mixed, although this would violate the local bylaw about "women only". The sort-of open question is, if they're going to label one pond for women only, must they refuse entry to it to trans-identifying men?

I confess to laughing at the Reddit poster who said, "how are they going to police this?". Honey - it's a bathing pond. If you see it has a cock between its legs, it shouldn't be there.

I mean (a) I'm not a man and I'm not going to swim in the men's (b) this issue and the recent removal of rights (or "reduced rights" as the delightful GC lawyer stated) is not about swimming, it's about being allowed to carry on my life peacefully, long after changing my sex without being outed, but you know this already.

Hmmm. I recall an emotionally incontinent male who used to post lengthy whining posts about women on here. He was also fond (amidst his tedious word salads of self absorbed nonsense) of parroting phrases like "seething contempt"

Is it a thing for men who dislike women?

@BeeSouriante you didn't change your sex though. That's the point. Whatever you did, whether that's hormones, or changing your style of clothes, or even surgery, none of these things can change your sex.

This!

There is no removal of rights, it is the confirmation that women also had rights this whole time.

Not one person has ever changed sex, it is impossible.

’Peaceful’, you say?

Gosh, you're posting like that chap on the other thread, LimeFinch.

It must be a common theme.

The Pond issue is particularly pertinent as

• women identifying as men have been removed from the Men's pond

• men identifying as women have not been removed from the Women's Pond

• they had a consultation about single sex ponds and Edward Lord admitted he refused to accept half the responses because he didn't like the answers

I hope Sex Matters goes to town on this.

Actually, male people don’t have and never had the right to use the female pool. It is only linguistically called the ‘men’s pool’. It is actually the pool for any male pool.

This ‘right’ you claim to have had isn’t a ‘right’. It is an additional privilege. Because you, as a male person, now demand to have access to all three pools.

The male pool is there for you. As is the mixed sex pool. That you choose not to use the male pool is purely your decision and it is actually not society’s remit to provide a male person who refuses to use the male pool access to the female pool.

You didn’t have the right to any female single sex provision, you assumed you did and took campaign group’s word for it that you did. And some organisations allowed this when they should never have. But the ‘right’ you claim is not a ‘right.’ Because organisations only have to make reasonable provision for safety, and no male person has the right to expect to be segregated from another male person in those pools and other publicly accessed spaces.

Perhaps you should start using accurate terms now that the law has been clarified.

Bee nobody is stopping you from living your best life - you could easily use the mixed pond if you want to swim. If what you actually want is to use the unconsenting women in the women’s pond for your personal validation, you might want to consider
a) whether that’s actually reasonable behaviour (hint, it’s not!)
b) why it is that you feel you need this external validation - women just are, they don’t need anyone else to believe it for it to be so…..

You have not changed your sex. That is impossible in humans. You have been allowed to pretend that you have changed your sex but you know and we know that you have not.

if you don’t want to use the Men’s Pond you can use the mixed pond. If you were a user of the Hampstead Women’s Pond you have already been using a mixed sex facility.

The world doesn’t revolve around you and your feelings. Females exist as a group and we want our single sex facilities to be just that. You need to come to terms with that fact.

The manliness manning through

Bees and butterflies, I'm sure it's a coincidence.

the attraction is in violating women’s spaces

This is exactly right. It’s the reason these men don’t want third spaces or any other solution that leaves women-only spaces for women.

They don’t particularly want the spaces or the services. They want to break women’s boundaries, to force women to accept men’s presence.

If women said “Have all our single-sex spaces then”, the men would leave them empty. The whole point is to force women to be their unwilling audience.

In essence, you want, and nothing and no one else matters. Particularly not women.

Yes, gathered that.

Thank you for another demonstration of why women need cast iron gatekept laws protecting their rights from male entitlement and misogyny.

Can you not peacefully use the mixed sex pond? I'm not seeing the problem here.

Absolutely.

As @Datun herself wisely said
’The men who want to use the women’s spaces are using the women in them. It’s not the space, it’s the women in them that validate their ‘gender identity’.

I'm confused. Is the "men's" pool supposed to be for male people of any gender identity now? Or people of either sex who actively ID as men gendered?

Bee seems to think (although they are quite muddled here) that the SC rules it's the latter but I thought it had ruled the former?